Kazakhstan upset over Borat anthem during medal ceremony

It’s been five years since Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” completely ruined Kazakhstan’s reputation (well, almost), and since then former Soviet republic has been trying to prove to the world that they are more than anti-Semitic sister lovers. While most people don’t really chuckle anymore when they hear the name Kazakhstan, what happened at the Arab Shooting Championship in Kuwait last week took the old Borat jokes a little too far.

Maria Dmitrenko won a gold medal at the championship on Thursday and instead of standing proud while the Kazakh anthem was played, she had to awkwardly listen to the spoof rendition from the film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” which include the lyrics, “Kazakhstan’s prostitutes cleanest in the region, except of course Turkmenistan’s.”

Awkward. Apparently the organizer in charge of the anthem simply downloaded the wrong one from YouTube, despite the Kazakh delegation’s offer to provide the real anthem. The Kazakhstan national sports agency has filed a complaint to the Asian Olympic Committee.

The true hero of the story is definitely Dmitrenko, who decided to pay respect to the ceremony and stay standing. Very nice!

Uri Fintzy is JTA's web content producer and also in charge of weekly video packages and occasional design projects. Uri is from Tel Aviv, Israel and a graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism. He has interned with several television stations in Portland, Ore., and in CBS News in New York.